My many thanks to the several people who have responded privately to my
initial post. I will endevor to ensure that the most salient points are
posted here.
The consenses so far:
1) FrontPage is quirky and you still have to know html to use it.
2) It doesn't take much work to correct Communicator pages.
3) Other packages MIGHT do the trick.
I am still not satisfied.
The beauty of Communicator is that, once it is set up, a neophyte can 1)
select "edit", 2) make changes, 3) select "publish" AND THEY ARE DONE!
The person doesn't have to know anything about ftp or html. (For that
matter, they don't even need to know a password, but this only works
with one account/directory.) When you add to this that the person is
using software (the browser) that they are already comfortable with, we
are talking about a NEAR ZERO learning curve.
Even editing one line of code destroys the simplicity here.
Does anyone know of a way to modify Communicator's behavior? Would the
commercial versions address this need?
How is it that no one at Netscape or Microsoft worries about producing
html 4.0 compliant code?
Thanks,
Bruce Bailey
> ----------
> From: Bruce Bailey[SMTP:bbailey@clark.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 1998 1:50 PM
> To: 'Web Accessibility Initiative'
> Subject: Using htlm editors to produce clean code?
>
> Has anybody had success using Microsoft FrontPage or Navigator Gold to
> generate html code that parses through Bobby or the W3C Validator without
> errors?
>
> I am confortable with html and text editors, but I need to find tools that
> our secretaries can use without learning html.
>
> Front Page generates way too much extraneous code and actually makes it
> difficult to put in good alt text. It's really overkill for what I am
> looking for, since it is site-oriented instead of page oriented. I
> envision giving responsibility for one-page-per-person for our site
> (eventually -- smile). Communicator's editor is not too bad from this
> point. You really can browse a site live, edit, publish -- all without
> knowing many details. I hate that Communicator favors appearance tags vice
> logical ones (<B> and <I> instead of <STRONG> and <EM>), but only fails me
> on two points:
> 1) It won't include the <!DOCTYPE... statement
> 2) It puts nbsp; after graphics in table cells which causes a Bobby error
> since my tables now mix graphics and text.
>
> Does anyone know how to defeat either of the above two behaviors?
>
> I understand HoT MetaL pro has a built-in validator, but I have not gotten
> a hold of it yet. Any praise for this product?
>
> Thanks very much for your time.
> Bruce Bailey
> www.dors.state.md.us